Seven years after being discharged from the U.S. Army under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," openly gay veteran Alex Nicholson is the executive director of Servicemembers United, an advocacy organization he founded.
Intended as a productive if imperfect compromise, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has resulted in thousands of discharges — many of them involving service members with critical skills. Historian Nathaniel Frank says it's time the ban was ended.
Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen discusses his life and his films — and why audiences shouldn't confuse the two. His latest movie, Whatever Works, tells the story of a "genius" professor in New York who marries a much younger woman.
What can old issues of Publishers Weekly tell us about reading habits in dire economic times? Maureen Corrigan cracks open some of the magazine's 1933 issues and learns that readers today aren't so different from our Depression-era brethren.
Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 subway-hostage thriller starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, and Luis Guzman.
TV historian David Bianculli worries that the death of analog television isn't politically neutral: It threatens to leave the neediest viewers in the Dark Ages.
The San Francisco, Chicago and Boston symphony orchestras have all released new live albums recently; classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz had a listen, and he has a review.
In Descent into Chaos, Ahmed Rashid examines the United States' failures in Central Asia, where, the author says, Washington has helped create an unstable Pakistan, a reinvigorated Taliban and a entrepreneurial al' Qaeda that is profiting off the opium trade.
In 2008, Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of doctors made history when they performed the first near-total face transplant in the United States. Siemionow writes about the procedure in the memoir Face to Face.
For the golden anniversary of the original cast album of Gypsy, Sony is reissuing the classic recording, which features Ethel Merman. Music critic Lloyd Schwartz sees how well it holds up.
It's the era of Twilight, and pop culture is swarming with the undead. Terry Gross talks to Academy Award-winning actress Anna Paquin, star of HBO's vampire series True Blood.
Gretchen Morgenson, financial reporter and business columnist for The New York Times, talks about efforts in Congress to regulate credit default swaps, which helped crash the banking system.
Actor Ed Helms, co-star of the new film The Hangover, studied improvisation with The Upright Citizens Brigade and got his start in comedy with numerous sketch comedy groups. He currently plays Andy Bernard, the salesman who loves a cappella, on the NBC comedy series The Office.
Author Larry Tye discusses Satchel Paige, a negro league pitcher who helped integrate baseball by touring the country and playing exhibition games with white players.
American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato released a dazzling CD of Handel arias — Furore, a collection of set-pieces from operas and oratorios in which Handel's characters experience flights of passion.
Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin joins Fresh Air to discuss the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which President Obama recently signed into law.
Seventy-two-year-old actor David Carradine was found dead in his hotel room in Bangkok. He was best known for his role in Kill Bill: Vol 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and the Kung Fu TV series.
In Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You, the wife of a powerful Hollywood executive unexpectedly finds herself at the helm of a popular book group. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "smart novel" that offers "a very tough reflection on the idea of 'group-ness' itself"
Linguist Geoff Nunberg has made a living out of parsing phrases. His new book, The Years of Talking Dangerously, analyzes the buzzwords, stock phrases and metaphors that were made popular during the Bush administration's tenure.
